- journeyswithann
Real men don't cry - do they?
I wake up and have no idea where I am. I’m looking around trying to orientate myself. My head is hurting. I lift my head and hope no one recognizes me as I try to figure out what happened this time...
I’m laying in a corner in a side street. I slowly start to realize what must have happened.
Like any other evening after work, I had a drink or two with my friends and colleagues. But somewhere, somehow, it turned from a quick fun night out to me ending up in this same insane place.
I can’t remember exactly how it all happened again, but I just know it has.
I am in a daze...compounded by headache and confusion. How did I get here, my friends long gone home? Why did it happen again?
something had to change.
Me, an alcoholic? No way.
I was a normal guy, after all, 41 years old. I had a good life, was a programmer and salesman, had a wonderful partner at my side, who fortunately still is with me today, nothing to complain about.
I just drank my drinks in the evening like everybody else. Where and when did it start to turn sideways?
How could it turn so bad?
just by doing what everybody else does. Having that first beer as a teenager (13), just to try, not to be the pussy of the group. The effect alcohol had was quite amazing. It dropped my inhibitions, my feeling of not being up to it. Suddenly I was someone people respected…
And quite quickly it was a habit, even more, a damn vice.
Then the stress of adulthood came. Working, paying bills, working more just to pay more bills...and nobody teaches us how to cope with all that.
‘Have a drink, it relaxes you’,
‘Having a drink helps cope with stress’
Soon, drinking became my companion, my brother in misery but the actual misery was drinking, not the feelings of not being up to it, not the confusion about my emotions, about having to be that strong, stoic man.
Those misunderstandings could have been resolved by talking to the right people, not some other drunks. ‘Have a drink, buddy, that’ll help’ …
Yeah, the hell it does!
So… I drank because it helped so wonderfully to forget the pain, it made me so brave (uninhibited actually) it made me function in the role that society inflicted on me and I never asked myself if I really wanted to be in that role…
Well, there were moments of clarity, but the pain was too bad to be bearable.
‘Quickly, have a drink before it surfaces again.’
And I know for a fact that a lot of men are struggling, are hiding their true feelings, want desperately to cry out loud or in silence, to talk about their true emotions with other men and are trapped in the erroneous and stupid cliché that society holds up.
The moment of change
The 3rd of March 2018 was the night all that would come to an abrupt end. Drunk as a skunk, I decided to drive home from the 50th birthday party of my sister. I could have slept there, everybody told me, nay, begged me to do so but no…
stubborn genius had to drive home and Boom! Out of nowhere, there was that wall in the middle of the road. Police, blood alcohol test, horrendous fine, drivers license gone for quite a while (which businessman needs a drivers license anyway, right?), five year sentence on probation but that didn’t make me change a thing because it wasn’t the first time that kind of event took place.
What changed my life was the day after when I saw the car, or what was left of it, in daylight. It wasn’t a car anymore, but a crumpled heap of sheet metal and I got away without the tiniest little scratch or wound.
Then I knew, I’m done with that. I still recall the feeling of numbness...a kind of dizziness...the kind of very strong feeling when you realize that this is a big moment.
Finally free
It still took me another year and a half to find the method that really set me free from drinking.
And I mean real freedom.
No need for a drink even when feeling like I feel right now, writing my story, close to tears, my belly going crazy, being in real pain. Those were the exact moments to open the bottle…
I had to go through all this to be able now to help others get that same freedom easily, without willpower, without craving. Smoothly and sustainably.
Real freedom?
Yes, here’s why. Even in my worst moods, the most outrageous days, not even the slightest thought crosses my mind of having a drink, and I won't go out to buy alcohol, all I need is right here.